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New York Coliseum

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New York Coliseum

The New York Coliseum was a convention center that stood at Columbus Circle in Manhattan, New York City, from 1956 to 2000. It was designed by architects Leon Levy and Lionel Levy in a modified International Style, and included both a low building with exhibition space and a 26-story office block. The project also included the construction of a housing development directly behind the complex.

The Coliseum was planned by Robert Moses, an urban planner and the chairman of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA). In 1946, it was proposed to build a convention center within a new Madison Square Garden building at Columbus Circle. This plan was not successful, nor was another plan for the Metropolitan Opera House. After years of delays, the Coliseum was approved in 1953, and construction started in 1954. The Coliseum hosted its first exhibits on April 28, 1956, followed by hundreds of conventions over the next four decades. The Coliseum supplanted the Grand Central Palace as the city's main convention center until the 1980s, when the Coliseum was superseded in that role by the Javits Center.

The TBTA's successor, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), started looking for buyers in order to raise money for its operations. Boston Properties attempted to negotiate a lease between 1987 and 1994. The site was ultimately bought by a joint venture between Time Warner and The Related Companies in 1998, and the Coliseum was demolished in 2000 to make way for the Time Warner Center.

The 323,000-square-foot (30,000 m2) Coliseum was located on the west side of Columbus Circle. It occupied the block from West 58th to West 60th Streets between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. One block of 59th Street was decommissioned to make way for the complex.

The Coliseum contained four exhibition floors, including a 150-foot (46 m)-square, three-story void for exhibiting large items, such as sailboats and airplanes. The exhibition space did not contain any windows; its exterior was instead sheathed in plain white stone. The space had three separate entrances and could host up to six shows at the same time. Nine elevators and five escalators were installed in this part of the building, as was a two-lane truck ramp. Upon the Coliseum's opening, one of the freight elevators was said to be larger than any other elevator in existence, except for the airplane elevators present on aircraft carriers. The attached office building had 26 stories and was covered in white and gray brick. The complex was designed by Leon Levy and Lionel Levy. The complex cost $35 million to build, of which $26.5 million came from toll revenues collected by the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA).

The sculptor Paul Manship was commissioned to design four plaques for the Coliseum. The four plaques depicted the federal, state, city, and TBTA seals. Just before the Coliseum was demolished, the MTA removed the plaques for restoration.

Christopher Gray of The New York Times criticized the complex as a "low point for New York's public buildings". He said that the visual relationship between the windowless convention space and the grid-shaped facade of the office building "was awkward at best". Gray quoted another magazine, Art News, as stating that the complex contained a "total lack of relation to its site". After the Coliseum's demolition was completed in 2000, Joyce Purnick of the Times wrote, "What was always wrong about the Coliseum was its original conception. It was, as an exhibition hall, broad and impenetrable, a wall of blond brick. There it sat at the gateway to Central Park—an unblinking barrier."

A U.S. postage stamp commemorates the Fifth International Philatelic Exhibition as well as the Coliseum.

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